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Excerpt from 'The Sum of Our Days'

The Sum of Our Days

A Memoir

HarperCollins

Chapter One

Darkest Waters

In the second week of December, 1992, almost as soon as
the rain let up, we went as a family to scatter your
ashes, Paula, following the instructions you had left in
a letter written long before you fell ill. As soon as we
advised them of your death, your husband, Ernesto, came
from New Jersey, and your father from Chile. They were
able to tell you good-bye where you lay wrapped in a
white sheet waiting to be taken to the crematory.
Afterward, we met in a church to hear mass and weep
together. Your father was pressed to return to Chile,
but he waited until the weather cleared, and two days
later, when finally a timid ray of sun peered out, the
whole family, in three cars, drove to a nearby forest.
Your father went in the lead, guiding us. He isn't
familiar with this region but he had spent the previous
two days looking for the best site, one that you would
have chosen. There are many places to choose from,
nature is prodigal here, but by one of those
coincidences that now are habitual in anything related
to you, he led us directly to the forest where I often
went to walk to ease my rage and pain while you were
sick, the same one where Willie had taken me for a
picnic shortly after we met, the same one where you and
Ernesto liked to walk hand in hand when you came to
visit us in California. Your father drove into the park,
followed the road a little way, parked the car, and
signaled us to follow him. He took us to the exact spot
that I would have chosen, because I had been there many
times to pray for you: a stream surrounded with tall
redwoods whose tops formed the dome of a green
cathedral. There was a fine, light mist that blurred the
contours of reality: the light barely penetrated the
trees, but the branches shone, winter wet. An intense
aroma of humus and dill rose from the earth. We stopped
at the edge of a pond formed by rocks and fallen tree
trunks. Ernesto, serious, haggard, but now without tears
because he had spilled them all, held the clay urn
containing your ashes. I had saved a few in a little
porcelain box to keep forever on my altar. Your brother,
Nico, had Alejandro in his arms, and your sister-in-law,
Celia, held Andrea, still a baby, wrapped in shawls and
clamped to her breast. I carried a bouquet of roses,
which I tossed, one by one, into the water. Then all of
us, including Alejandro, who was three, took a handful
of ashes from the urn and dropped them onto the water.
Some floated briefly among the roses, but most sank to
the bottom, like fine white sand.

"What is this?" Alejandro asked.

"Your aunt Paula," my mother told him, sobbing.

"It doesn't look like her," he commented, confused....
I will begin by telling you what has happened since
1993, when you left us, and will limit myself to the
family, which is what interests you. I'll have to omit
two of Willie's sons: Lindsay, whom I barely know-I've
seen him only a dozen times and we've never exchanged
more than the essential courteous greetings-and Scott,
because he doesn't want to appear in these pages. You
were very fond of that thin, solitary boy with thick
eyeglasses and disheveled hair. Now he is a man of
twenty-eight; he looks like Willie and his name is
Harleigh. He chose the name Scott when he was five; he
liked it and used it a long time, but during his teens
he reclaimed the one given him.

The first person who comes to my mind and heart is
Jennifer, Willie's only daughter, who at the beginning
of that year had just escaped for the third time from a
hospital where she had gone to find rest for her bones
because of yet another infection, among the many she had
suffered in her short life. The police had not given any
indication that they were going to look for her; they
had too many cases like hers, and this time Willie's
contacts with the law didn't help at all. The physician,
a tall, discreet Filipino who by dint of perseverance
had saved her when she arrived at the hospital with a
raging fever, and who by now knew her because he had
attended her on two previous occasions, explained to
Willie that he had to find his daughter soon or she
would die. With massive doses of antibiotics for several
weeks, he might be able to save her, he said, but we had
to prevent a relapse, for that would be fatal. We were
in the emergency room-yellow walls, plastic chairs, and
posters of mammograms and tests for AIDS-which was
filled with patients awaiting their turn to be treated.
The doctor took off his round, metal-framed glasses,
cleaned them with a tissue, and guardedly answered our
questions. He had no sympathy for Willie or for me; he
perhaps mistook me for Jennifer's mother. In his eyes we
were guilty; we had neglected her, and now when it was
too late, we had showed up acting distressed. He avoided
going into details-patient information was
confidential-but Willie could deduce that in addition to
multiple infections and bones turned to splinters, his
daughter's heart was on the verge of giving out. For
nine years Jennifer had persisted in jousting with
death.

We had been going to see her in the hospital for several
weeks. Her wrists were tied down so that in the delirium
of fever she couldn't tear out the intravenous tubes.
She was addicted to nearly every known drug, from
tobacco to heroin. I don't know how her body had endured
so much abuse. Since they couldn't find a healthy vein
in which to inject medications, they ...